VMware will ship a desktop virtualization client for Android Honeycomb-based tablets at the end of the second quarter or beginning of the third quarter, according to Vittorio Viarengo, vice president of End User Computing at VMware.

VMware may have been late to the game, but now the company is stepping up its tablet push. Following the March launch of the View Client for iPad, the company has ramped up work on the Android version, Viarengo said.

By installing View on a tablet, users can access their virtual Windows desktops, applications and data from anywhere, according to Viarengo. With clients for iOS and Android, VMware will cover most of the devices that people care about, Viarengo said.

Users of Research In Motion's upcoming PlayBook will also be able to access virtual desktops using a View client of their own, but Viarengo doesn't know when that client will arrive.

But the platform users really want is Mac OS X. Later in the year, VMware will start shipping a version of Fusion, VMware's software for running Windows on Apple's computers, which becomes the Local Mode for View on Macs. Local Mode allows users to run managed virtual desktops locally without a network connection.

The company is also working on a PCoIP client for Mac OS X. PCoIP is the protocol VMware uses to deliver remote desktops. Eventually the two products will merge into one, Viarengo said.

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